Singing with Jesus

We shouldn’t be too surprised if Jesus, the Son of David, was also a song writer. The Lord’s Prayer is a psalm, and reading the prayer as a psalm opens up its meaning. To read the Lord’s Prayer as a psalm, you have to be able to read a psalm as a psalm. So this book is first of all an adventure in reading the Bible’s poetry--the psalms, of course, but also much of the prophets’ testimony. The Old Testament’s poetry is rich in themes important to the Lord’s Prayer: heaven and earth, kingship and covenant, prophetic teaching and repentance, priesthood and redemption. Jesus brilliantly brings these strands together in the prayer through which he taught his disciples to pray. Much richer than a ''laundry list'' of petitions, the prayer beautifully affirms the counter-cultural kingdom of the only true God. It commits us to merciful behavior and full dependence upon--and contentment with--God’s provision. The prayer is a plea that the rift between God’s authority and this earth would be healed . . . all organized around images of Israel’s experiences in the Exodus.